Black Dragon's Revenge (2017)

I suppose you could argue that the story wasn’t what Director James Cameron was aiming for, it was the visuals. The spectacle of it all was the point, and it certainly shows.

'Blonde' commits a relentless assault on the autonomy of Marilyn Monroe, reducing the icon to nothing more than a victim of the director's whims.

I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before. 

If the message here is that without a support system, grieving people turn into monsters, it’s not really well-delivered and may be flawed as a message itself.

Despite the film’s efforts to reframe its heroine with modern complexity, a certain emotional distance lingers.

'Alice' is a genre trifecta: one part revenge drama, one part historical account, one part throwback to Blaxploitation—kinda 'Django' meets 'Roots' meets 'Foxy Brown.'